Posted
by
timothy
on Friday February 05, 2010 @08:13AM
from the let's-just-size-you-for-your-uniform dept.

pogopop77 writes "CNN has an interesting story about how newborn babies in the United States are routinely screened for a panel of genetic diseases. Since the testing is mandated by the government, it's often done without the parents' consent. However, many states store that DNA information indefinitely, and even make it available to researchers with little or no privacy safeguards. Sometimes even the names are attached! Here is information on state-by-state policies (PDF) of the handling of the DNA information."

The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008, also referred to as GINA, is a new federal law that protects Americans from being treated unfairly because of differences in their DNA that may affect their health. The new law prevents discrimination from health insurers and employers. The President signed the act into federal law on May 21, 2008. The parts of the law relating to health insurers will take effect by May 2009, and those relating to employers will take effect by November 2009.

When did insurance companies start to care about laws? They'll just deny your application without any reasons or make one up. What makes you think their hordes of lawyers wouldn't find a way to weasel around such irrelevant laws?

Unless everybody is required to carry insurance, exclusions for pre-existing conditions are inevitable. Otherwise everybody would just wait until they got sick to buy insurance (i.e. it wouldn't really be insurance any more).

My understanding is the new healtcare plan would have mandated we all buy health insurance, and prevented insurance companies from excluding pre-existing conditions. For whatever faults the bill has (or had), I think making people buy health insurance (from private companies, or as

Unless everybody is required to carry insurance, exclusions for pre-existing conditions are inevitable. Otherwise everybody would just wait until they got sick to buy insurance (i.e. it wouldn't really be insurance any more).

This is a bullshit argument. Can you honestly say that you envision people in the ambulance having a heart attack on the phone trying to buy health insurance? "Hey Mr. EMT, can you hold off on that oxygen mask for a minute? I gotta call my insurance agent..."

I think making people buy health insurance (from private companies, or as a tax) is a good thing

Yeah, except for the fact that it's blatantly unconstitutional. Of course that's never stopped the Federal Government before....

Can you honestly say that you envision people in the ambulance having a heart attack on the phone trying to buy health insurance?

You make the implicit assumption that medical problems occur dramatically and in a short period of time. While that does happen, the usual route is much slower - over weeks to months. You have some vague symptoms, you blow them off for a bit (since you don't like doctors and besides, you don't have insurance).

Otherwise too many people fail to make provisions for the inevitable, and then fall back on the rest of us.

See, that's where it gets dicey. Once you start down the path to limiting individual choices and freedoms for "the good of society", things just can't end well when you figure in every government's natural tendency to expand in size and scope while removing ever-more individual freedom.

Just how much individual choice/freedom sacrificed for the "greater good" is too much? Since bad health costs more, and diet is so important, will the government mandate government-healthcare-prescribed daily diets? How about exercise? Mandatory exercise/gym membership? Traffic fines for going out in the cold without your scarf?

Some lifestyles, sports, hobbies, etc could have a huge impact on an individuals' healthcare costs, so might they be regulated too?

I just think America can reduce healthcare costs and take care of those without insurance without a 2,000-page purely one-party bill put together in secret backroom deals attempting to completely restructure ~20% of the US economy and having the government intruding even more on individual freedom and choice while likely actually increasing healthcare costs and the national debt with a new entitlement, reducing quality-of-care, still not insuring everybody, and not even addressing tort reform.

Yeah! Our current system is so much better than the crappy health care in Japan, Sweden, Great Britain, Canada and basically the rest of the civilized world! Also because of socialized health care, all those for'n countries have mandatory gym memberships and shoot people for being fat! And because those for'ners allowed gays in their military, they had to reinstate the draft! [scienceblogs.com]

We should keep on doing exactly what we're doing, only more because it's working so well already!

The big difference between American and the rest of the first world is twofold actually. First, that american corporations and industries have an unprecedented amount of influence over government policy. Second, that in general, american corporations care more about return to shareholders than anything else, including the treatment of their employees and corporate citizenship. The only time the latter two get any funding is usually for PR reasons, not altruism.

It seems to me that rather than put the entire population through the intensive dane brammage of trying to figure out the deliberately incomprehensible insurance policies, not to mention the endless paperwork of showing that you either have insurance or can't afford it, it would make a LOT more sense to just cover everyone and be done with it.

Truly massive amounts are wasted by forcing each and every healthcare provider to deal with each and every insurer's unique and convoluted claims process and by forcing each and every patient to show that they have insurance, determine that their particular insurance will work with that particular provider, and on and on and on.

Then they get to deal with if you have procedure A as a result of B on a friday before the full moon at the low tide and the doctor has real plants in the waiting room, we cover 75.00030456762535646% of the bill (rounded down), except if you ever said booger before the age of 3 in which case we cover 32.7623235624784781% but only if you can hop on one foot. If you have the procedure on any other day, our percentage is based on a spin of the wheel-of-denial (better hope it doesn't land on bankrupt!)

But if you have chronic pain, we will provide you the new FDA approved baby aspirin with cyanide!

Honestly, it's to the point that people might seriously consider the value of "insurance insurance" to cover those times when your insurance finds a new way to let you down when you need it most.

Howsabout instead of all of that, we just cover everyone out of the general funds and be done with it.

But it everyone pays a little, then the cost for everyone goes down, even if it means that "you pay for your neighbour".

It's one of the reasons that countries with universal healthcare systems pay *considerably* less of their GDP on healthcare compared to the USA.

The US system is excellent once you are past all the insurance nonsense, but it doesn't have to be like that. If everyone paid national insurance (akin to the UK method), then you would pay *much* less than you are paying for health insurance right

You might want to watch the movie again. The fictional country in the film had non-genetic-discrimination laws as well, which were as routinely ignored as speed limits are now. Actually worse than speed limits, they barely even made pretense for the discrimination.

The problem is that neither party was really wrong. There's a civil liberties issue: you don't wan't people to get stuck in an unrewarding career track with no hope of bettering themselves because of some checks on a list, but from an economic

medical care is becoming so expensive that a lot of employer plans where there is no prior condition clauses already have something called co-insurance where you pay 20% of the charges plus the premiums. if you want to destroy your health no one cares and no one will let you die in the street. they will just make you pay to cover the cost of your care

The article touches on insurance but I fear this particular part more than the privacy concerns:

Since health insurance paid for Isabel's genetic screening, her positive test for a cystic fibrosis gene is now on the record with her insurance company, and the Browns are concerned this could hurt her in the future.

And if the disease is considered genetic by the medical community like Alzheimer's or even high cholesterol, is it going to affect her descendants through the ages forthcoming when they try to get insurance? Already you have people with pre-existing conditions finding it hard to get insurance [cnn.com] but I fear of a future where health care crises are addressed by increasing fees passed on to people with genetic disorders and diseases that they not only have no control over but also don't even suffer from yet.

Government also is not a money tree. This is why socialist health care has always failed.

Citation needed.

You either have to deny care to certain people or ration it.

Again citation needed, I don't see droves of people denied care in Europe.

There is no such thing as infinite free anything, including health care.

Health issues are not infinite either, they are quite measurable.

If you want someone to do WORK for you to help you live longer then you have to trade an equivalent amount of WORK in exchange.

Have you ever heard of Insurance or, gasp!, Taxes ?You know, there is a reason you pay an insurance premium or taxes (for public medical insurance which is another name for Healthcare).It's to get a pool of money so that you can provide services to all without having every single person to pay in full. If you have to pay in full for service then insurance

It must be awful to not understand what insurance is. All insurance (Auto, Life, Fire, Health, etc) works by the majority subsidizing the minority. The majority pays much more in premiums than they receive in benefits due to the fear of the small chance they will require care that is very expensive. The chances of you using as much coverage as you pay in premiums has to be small or insurance would not work. It is not a charity.

It's to get a pool of money so that you can provide services to all without having every single person to pay in full. If you have to pay in full for service then insurance is useless.

First: That pool of money has to equal the total premiums or taxes paid, right? The pool doesn't receive charitable donations and money doesn't just magically appear.
Second: The total benefits paid out can't be larger than the pool or else insurance would operate at a loss, which other than the government apparently, is unsustainable.
Third: The math doesn't lie. Some people will pay much more in premiums than they receive in benefits and some people will pay much less in premiums than they receive in benefits. Insurance operates on the fear that you will be unlucky and be one of the people who requires expensive treatment. The majority would be better off putting their money in a savings account. I am 25 years old and have paid for my own insurance for 7 years. It cost me (including what my employer contributes) about 5 grand a year. With no interest I would have $35,000 right now minus 7 routine check ups @ a couple hundred dollars each cash. If I invested that $5000 a year in a savings account that earns 2% interest starting now, when I am 50 I will have $172,009. I am basically gambling that I will require over $172,000 worth of medical care by the time I am 50. Even though the chances of that being the case are very small.

With no interest I would have $35,000 right now minus 7 routine check ups @ a couple hundred dollars each cash. If I invested that $5000 a year in a savings account that earns 2% interest starting now, when I am 50 I will have $172,009. I am basically gambling that I will require over $172,000 worth of medical care by the time I am 50. Even though the chances of that being the case are very small.

1)Good luck finding a savings account that actually pays out 2% interest (yes I know there are a few, but they keep dropping rates as long as the fed stays at 0-0.25%. Mine has dropped from 3% to 1.2% in the last 18 months). CDs aren't much better unless you're willing to lock it up for a long time. 401k is the best, but the money is not then available if you do need it for medical expenses.

2)You'd be amazed at how quickly you can rack up $172,000 in medical expenses and the chances are probably higher than you think. Cost per day in a hospital is anywhere from $1000-$3500, depending on level of care. If you get in an auto-accident or have some other condition requiring emergency surgery, that's very expensive. Plus, if you're uninsured, you get charged more or you may be denied non-emergent care unless you can prove the ability to self-pay. Chemo treatments can easily be $5000 per treatment or more, and a typical course would be 6 weeks of treatment 3 times a week.
Also take into account any lost wages due to a serious injury or medical condition leading to hospitalization and possibly long recovery.

3)You also need to take into account costs of what would happen if you had a large medical expense now, not covered by insurance. The interest rate on any debts accrued because of it would most certainly be greater than the 2% you would gain in a savings account.

Let me phrase this a different way.In the 1st world, it's rare for someone to out and out DIE of hunger, yet there are plenty of people who can't afford food. Health-care should be the same way, no one should die because they don't get preventative treatment.

I'm not necessarily arguing for heroic measures should my heart lung and spleen all fail at once, but dammit, someone should need their foot amputated and dead kidneys because they were too poor to afford their insulin. (does diabetes kill kidneys? I

I an not so sure about the "cat people" but I could see some law being passed to stop certain conditions/illnesses from being passed on. Think of the following: AIDS and rheumatoid arthritis. Both are bad. Both are treatable but currently not curable. Now the adult with either of those decides that they want children. Then pass it on to their child. So now a child has AIDS or rheumatoid arthritis. Those (and others) are bad enough when adults have them. But a child suffering with it is worse. A 3-4 year old

The problem - the estimated costs for care in the future is directly related to your genetic disposition. The second company advertises that they will do exactly what the first company does - only with other words.

Lots of people probably don't mind "the government" keeping their DNA on file, but lots of people probably DO mind private insurance companies having the DNA data:

"Since health insurance paid for Isabel's genetic screening, her positive test for a cystic fibrosis gene is now on the record with her insurance company, and the Browns are concerned this could hurt her in the future."It's really a black mark against her, and there's nothing we can do to get it off there," Brown says. "And let's say in the future they can test for a gene for schizophrenia or manic-depression and your baby tests positive -- that would be on there, too."Brown says if the hospital had first asked her permission to test Isabel, now 10 months old, she might have chosen to pay for it out of pocket so the results wouldn't be known to the insurance company."

Brown says if the hospital had first asked her permission to test Isabel, now 10 months old, she might have chosen to pay for it out of pocket so the results wouldn't be known to the insurance company."

...which is just as bad, of course.

The insurance business model relies upon insuring measurable, but fundamentally unknown risks.

If you know you're going to get a condition that costs $1M to treat, you're going to want insurance against that condition. Conversely, if you know that you're not going to get any of these improbable-but-expensive conditions, (but will instead die of a nice cheap heart attack), you're better off not buying insurance in the first place.

In the end, it will be this phenomenon - that consumers, en masse, can invest a small amount of money into a DNA test, and gain an informational advantage over the insurance company that's, actuarially speaking, worth more than the cost of the test - that kills the insurance industry as a business.

In a world of cheap and widely-available DNA testing, it doesn't matter whether you keep the current system, or if you make coverage mandatory and have the government (the taxpayer) as the carrier of last resort. The end result is indistinguishable from single-payer.

Unfortunately, Congress isn't interested in talking about health care reform, they're still talking about health insurance reform. The only difference is that the middleman, who can afford the lobbyists, gets a cut of the pie.

"Lots of people probably don't mind "the government" keeping their DNA on file....

I mind... The last grovernment that tried to use genetics to modify it's society of illness didn't have the technology,so they just resorted to gassing millions of the "unfit" to protect the chosen.

If you kill the baby before birth because of a genetic code defect, it is the same result. Just less gas and mass of bodies,but the results are the same. Case in point, both my children had Downs Syndrome like symptoms. If t

I mind... The last grovernment that tried to use genetics to modify it's society of illness didn't have the technology,
so they just resorted to gassing millions of the "unfit" to protect the chosen.

I don't think that government was the last one. Compulsory sterilization for eugenic reasons occurred more recently than that in the United States, and it wouldn't surprise me to find out that some countries have it today.

<quote>Aborting a fetus rather than having a baby you can't properly care for, is responsible behavior. (Of course using contraception and not getting pregnant in the first place is even more responsible.)</quote>

Except contraception fails. I know of at least one mother who's in that state simply because the Pill didn't work.

I love it. I could see it coming true too. A society that professes to claim to value the life of the baby over the mother (the so-called Anti-abortionists) forcing a mother to get an abortion for a child she wants simply because it might be "defective."

IMO there should be no health insurance companies. Get rid of them and have the government pay for your health care, and our costs (the highest in the world) will drop to where more civilized countries' costs are, and our health will be markedly improved. Your higher taxes will more than be made up by not having to pay insurance premiums.

We have the most expensive health care in the world, but by no metric do we have the best care. I blame private insurance. I had hopes for Obama, but his version of health

Get rid of them and have the government pay for your health care, and our costs (the highest in the world) will drop to where more civilized countries' costs are, and our health will be markedly improved. Your higher taxes will more than be made up by not having to pay insurance premiums.

And the Government will have your complete medical record on file. How long do you think it will be before they start using it for other purposes With your well known mistrust of the police I would think that having the Government involved in your health care would be the last thing that you would want....

And the Government will have your complete medical record on file. How long do you think it will be before they start using it for other purposes

Such as?

With your well known mistrust of the police I would think that having the Government involved in your health care would be the last thing that you would want

Yes, I mistrust the police and mistrust the government, but both are necessary for civilization. Other countries have government-run health care, and they have better care, are healthier, and pay a whol

IMO there should be no health insurance companies. Get rid of them and have the government pay for your health care, and our costs (the highest in the world) will drop to where more civilized countries' costs are

IMO you are a free individual and are capable of moving to a "more civilezed country." So plesae, start packing your bags instead of trying to steal from me.

Your higher taxes will more than be made up by not having to pay insurance premiums.

Sadly, a genotype fingerprint of just 24 well-selected markers is enough to differentiate an individual, with an error rate far lower than 1/ # of people on the planet. So while having names attached to samples is ethically deplorable, in practice it doesn't really even matter. I do genetic research, and the first thing we do is de-identify samples in the database. When we get samples from other sites with names still on them, we get pissed at the site. It's just sloppy, and certainly doesn't help the research.

If you just pick 24 random SNPs, they may not be particularly informative for your population (i.e. they may be monomorphic or have very low minor allele frequencies that don't help you discriminate individuals). So you want to pick markers that are bi or even tri-allelic with high MAFs for your population, to make sure they vary enough from person to person to tell them apart.

To clarify, you want each of your markers to carry maximum information. SNPs are the easiest/cheapest markers to genotype, and represent positions in the genome where some chromosomes in the population have one nucleotide (e.g. G, one of the alleles) and others have a different nucleotide (e.g. T, the other allele). (I say chromosomes instead of people, since people are diploid and will have 2 copies of each chromosome. Diploid genotypes are then GG, GT, or TT for a G/T SNP). To maximize information, you want to choose a SNP where the probability of these genotypes is relatively even--maximized if the proportion of G's and T's in the population are equal, leading to 25% GG, 50% GT, and 25% TT.

While the parent is correct that 24 SNPs is sufficient in a given population, in practice it's probably hard to choose 24 SNPs that cover ALL populations in the world well (since a SNP with a high minor allele frequency in, say, Europeans, may not have a high minor allele frequency in Asians, or Indians, or Australians...

the information is kept by a private entity, not even government. Also, most hospitals collect the placenta and the cord for stem cell collection (and of course the baby's and mother's DNA).

I think this is a loosing battle. It's so easy to collect DNA anyway. It's not really hard to tell where all this is leading. Just by sampling yesterday's news you can imagine (without being too imaginative) that one day a corporation is going to be a president of USA or the new Earth government, and each one of the inhabitants is going to be matrix like "cells" serving the corporation. If we don't destroy the Earth first, that is.

My wife does molecular and cytogenetic testing. This was her reaction:

"Over reaction. Yes the state labs keep blood spots...I don't know when anyone would ever want to go back and get a sample with someone's name on it unless they were working on a gene that is on the newborn screening panel. They legally can not use genetic testing to prevent you from getting a job or insurance..and who would. It would take more time and money than it's worth to get that information from a newborn screening card. Everyone is told about newborn screening and everyone has the opportunity to decline. It's a matter of whether you are actually paying attention to what is happening with your child. If you don't understand you have a responsibility to speak up. Newborn screening is important...research on deidentified samples is important. No one is out to get you. No one has the time or energy to get you. Life is not CSI."

Those issues don't scare me. I've been self employed and have skills that can't be taken away from me. If I need medical care I can pay cash if need be. What scares me is the idea of the government arresting me without cause because my DNA sample was found at the scene of some crime.

Plus, this ignores the other side of the case - if you KNOW your kid will never get cystic fibrosis, why pay for insurance that covers that disease? If you KNOW your kid will be diabetic (most likely), why not go ahead and buy the super-deluxe no-copay/no-limit health plan?

Insurance only works in the absence of knowledge by BOTH parties. Genetic testing makes true insurance impossible.

Now you can still have socialized medicine, and many people call it "insurance" but that really isn't what it is. A kid born with a bad heart valve or whatever doesn't need insurance - they need health care. In the US, for a number of reasons, the one has become synonymous with the other. What most people think of as "insurance" is just a discount buying plan so that you're not taken advantage of by price-gouging hospitals and doctors/etc.

Note, this isn't intended as a criticism of either private insurance or socialized medicine. The problem we as a society has it that most people don't really appreciate what both of these things really are, and what their inherent pros/cons are. The fact that people with a profit motive (from insurers to vendors to doctors to everybody else) bribe politicians left and right doesn't help to clarify things either.

My son was born with a thyroid problem, without the required state testing he probably wouldn't have been diagnosed until after he started having developmental issues. Because of the screening he was immediately put on Synthroid and leads a normal healthy life.

Other than using the DNA to later in life convict him of a crime, I have no other problems with any entity having access to DNA. The only thing that scares me is being put in jail for petty crimes because you're linked to a crime by your DNA. As

My son was born with a thyroid problem, without the required state testing he probably wouldn't have been diagnosed until after he started having developmental issues. Because of the screening he was immediately put on Synthroid and leads a normal healthy life.

Let's be clear: Genetic testing is not the problem here -- on the contrary, I am sure there are many positive examples like yours where genetic testing has helped people. It's even okay for the government to mandate testing -- yes, there is a compelling public health interest.

The problem arises with the disclosure of the substance (dna itself) and results of this testing. The government has no claim to either beyond basic statistics of 'X cases of Y in Z area'. As a soon-to-be parent, I am outraged that the

Oh, thank $DIETY, as long as it's not legal, we're fine. Can we talk about illegal wiretaps by the government en masse in recent years with the cooperation of major telecoms, where nobody will ever be prosecuted?

Your wife's right, nobody's going to go back to a paper card for information. They're going to go to a database where getting this information is easy and inexpensive. Just look to jurisdictions that do or want to take DNA if you're convicted or accused of a crime, or in some cases arrested. If this information isn't in a database now, it will be when someone comes up with a perfectly reasonable and innocuous reason to do it. The abuse of the data comes later. The medical field is great at this, sadly. It makes me angry when I get forms, like I did for umbilical cord blood donation, that talk about how it can save lives of my child or others if they have some condition or other.....oh, and we can use it for research if we want....oh, and we can also use it for anything else we want, without limitation.

What? No. Stop being ridiculously unreasonable and overreaching. Ok, testing for certain genetic diseases is a good idea. You may proceed. You may not keep the samples. You may not do anything with the information that doesn't directly benefit my child's health without my consent.

It isn't about what the law says is legal, or even about what people are doing with the data right now.

It takes a long time to build this sort of database, and create the mechanism by which outside agencies can access the data, but it is relatively quick to put the legislation in place (if you wait for the right moment). Once the system is there, the legislative changes will follow at some point.

for our second kid who is due soon, we have a midwife at a birth center that's about a half hour away from our house. the hospital was simply not a very pleasant experience. our first doctor elected to give my wife surgery to cut the placenta because it wasn't coming out fast enough. turns out the doctor was in a hurry because she had to catch a plane for vacation.

I am not yet a parent so I have no first hand experience but I find the claims of that website fascinating.

They use a lot of new-age bullshit language, but looking beyond that many of their claims require little, if any, suspension of disbelief.

The claim that women are born with all the instincts necessary to successfully give birth is plausible because every other creature on the planet can and natural selection would quickly remove those that can't from the gene pool.

Humans have been doing a good job of avoiding natural selection for quite some time now. Yes, animals give birth without aid because that is their only option. Humans, on the other hand, have had midwives, healers, doctors, the local crone, or some other community support for ages. What we've been naturally selecting for as humans is women and children who can survive assisted births.

That's all true. On the other hand at least some segment of the population retains good instincts in this area and were gracious enough to allow video evidence to document this fact.

I certainly am not calling for an end to hospitals and maternity wards but it's good to look at arguments that go against the common knowledge and reevaluate our assumptions from time to time. That's how we make progress.

How much of what we do is based on sound reasoning and how much is done simply because "we've always done it

The claim that women are born with all the instincts necessary to successfully give birth is plausible because every other creature on the planet can and natural selection would quickly remove those that can't from the gene pool.

This is absurd. The whole point of at least being near a hospital (even if you choose to give birth at home) is so your wife and new child don't get "removed from the gene pool."

Natural selection is just a natural process, not some jealous god whose dictates we must strive to o

Natural selection is just a natural process, not some jealous god whose dictates we must strive to obey.

You're reading too much into what I wrote. I'm saying the claims that the authors of the website I linked to have at least enough plausibility that they shouldn't be immediately dismissed. Certainly what is published there is not the final word on childbirth, but it is worthy of further investigation.

Unlike most animals humans have in recent evolutionary history greatly increased the size of our brains. This in turn has resulted in much bigger heads in babies - something we haven't yet fully evolved to deal with. As a result the chances of complications are higher than in other animals.

Also whenever someone tells you anything that involves an "we did it in pre-historic times without problems" argument, know that they are full of shit.

complete BS, a lot of women need surgery after a birth to repair damage. a lot of children used to die during birth because the placenta twisted around their neck and suffocated them. or if they didn't die it would result in development problems due to reduced oxygen to the brain. a lot of women also lose the ability to give birth to second and third children because the baby causes a lot of internal damage. one person i know said that in order for her to have a third child, she would spend months in the ho

Pray there are no mdeical complications. Before they started having children in hospitals, childbirth was the #1 killer. Back in those days, men had longer life expectancies than women just because of that.

Parents SHOULD get their babies tested for major genetic illnesses, they SHOULD get their kids fingerprinted and footprinted, and they SHOULD have current dental x-rays and photographs available.

But the parents should be the only ones who have long-term copies of this data.

By the way, many public school systems keep photographs of children long-term - your kid's high school probably has his kindergarten photo in the kid's "permanent record." Schools usually destroy "permanent records" several years after g

If you already have an expensive condition, the concept of insurance no longer applies to you. It is no longer possible to pool your risk. At that point, you are looking for a SUBSIDY.

Insurance is only possible when you have a large pool of people looking to mitigate the risk of a low probability but high downside event. Mathematically, fire insurance is a terrible purchase. The cost of premiums times the chance of having a claim is WAY higher than the expected payout. But you buy it because the downside is huge and you don't know if you are going to be on the unlucky side or not.

That is a great point. And that's exactly why "health insurance" as a primary means of paying for health care doesn't make any sense. After all, things like annual check-ups, blood tests, etc - are not "low probability high downside events." Certainly events like pregnancy and birth are not. Clarifying this distinction really helps to see the inherent sensibility of single-payer. We expect that everyone will need health care, though not everyone will be in a car accident or have their house burn down - so t

Bingo. You hit the nail on the head. There needs to be a distinction between "health insurance" and "health care." There need to be further distinctions between ordinary maintenance-level "health care" (annual check-ups, birth control pills, ordinary sicknesses that are treated with one or two doctor visits), extra-ordinary "health care" (significant devastating acute care problems like broken bones, hospitalizations for serious infections, treatable cancers), and extreme "health care" (untreatable/diffi

The problem with analogies is that they allow people to focus on the wrong part of the analogy.

The difference between a house and a body is that you can't build a new body. If you die, your corpse is certain to be branded as uninsurable, just as the smoking ruins of a burned down house will be uninsurable. In your terms, it is like building a defective house and then having someone say "Sorry, THIS HOUSE can't be insured." But you can't build a new body, and that is where it all breaks down.

We used Census records (supposedly secret for a century) to help find Japanese to intern in World War II.

In the same war the Germans, of course, respected no privacy constraints at all, and used any information they could get for all sorts of much more nefarious projects.

I am old enough to remember that, not only were blacks segregated in the South, but that blood tests would be run to determine just who was and wasn't black, in borderline cases. If DNA testing had been available, I have no doubt it would have been used.

So it seems pretty clear that DNA information, if kept indefinitely in an identifiable fashion, will eventually be used maliciously. A long and lamentable history shows that we can count on that. The question is, are we going to act on this knowledge, or do nothing about it, and continue to let things slide into what could be a very nasty future.

>>if kept indefinitely in an identifiable fashion, will eventually be used maliciously

Add to that the potential for misappropriation along the way. Data gets stolen, and sold.

I was horrified on a trip to Disney World 2 weeks ago when I saw they had fingerprint scanners on every turnstyle (in addition to your pass card). Supposedly this is to ensure only one person uses the card, and you can't hand it off to someone else. The good news is that they don't ask it from kids, and when I refused they sim

Think about this factor: if they keep record of the DNA and fingerprints of almost everyone, the usefulness will go down... If everyone is registered theoretically you would have no crime, since the detection should be 100%. But we all know that won't happen, crime will continue and smart people will find new ways to circumvent the fingerprint or DNA detection... I even read an article recently that DNA can be faked now (the tested markers), so you can impersonate any unlucky fuck. If you can prove that doz

I don't think that the real issue is privacy. After all, DNA is so easy to obtain that if someone is determined to do it, it's a simple task. No, I think the real issue is the cost of collecting, storing and analyzing this mountain of data. Exactly what are the benefits supposed to be, versus the costs involved? Do we really want to pay for all of this? Is it going to maintain roads, or prevent crime?

Of course there's the possibility of charging for access to this database, as researchers would have a bona-

I don't think that the real issue is privacy. After all, DNA is so easy to obtain that if someone is determined to do it, it's a simple task.

What's difficult is obtaining the DNA of millions of adults and associating each sample with the name of the person it comes from. So it's an issue of privacy when you can do that on such a large scale by sampling babies. You build a database and if in the future we get the technology to sequence all those DNA cheaply we'll get a searchable db of everybody in the US. That's probably a valuable asset so my concerns about privacy are big.

My wife and I recently had a baby in Texas and found out about this. The blood sample is taken by pricking the babies heel 24 hours after birth and placing five drops of blood on a five panel card. The state of Texas requires that the samples be sent to a state lab and screened for congenital adrenal hyperplasia, congenital hypothyroidism, galactosemia, phenylketonuria, sickle-beta thalassemia, sickle-cell anemia, and sickle-hemoglobin C disease (http://www.dshs.state.tx.us/LAB/nbs_article.shtm). Luckily

Openness is the only way to go. Instead of deception and hiding our DNA why not go out into the world with the truth displayed for all to see? Some folks will be inferior in their composition but if that is the way that God made them why should they feel shame? It is time for people to forget these primitive notions about privacy.

I recently had my first baby, who came out a little premature. I was disgusted by the sheer volume of blood testing performed. The NICU staff did the normal, government-mandated tests, then they did regular blood testing every week to monitor her anemia. Somehow the NICU staff was "mystified" as to why my daughter's anemia was getting worse. I'm not a doctor. I am an engineer on a campus with medical journal access. With a simple model based on her estimated blood volume and the volume they removed for all

Sure that's a problem, but not a serious one. After all, if I had some power and I wanted to frame you, then all I have to do is find some child porn on your computer. No need to spend a lot more money to grow a clone criminal.

I really don't know what the problems of human cloning in the future will come from. Maybe someone will make a few billion slave laborers or really rich people will come up with an exclusive sort of immortality that requires a lot of clones to maintain. But spending a lot of money

Actually, I can see this being used to clear someone on the basis that a clone might have done it first. Defence lawyers tend to be better pai^H^H^H motivated so will try this at the first instance that it might actually work.